Fear of Falling
by sifuXANA
Summary: Pieces of Kitty's life as they fall in and out of place.
1. Before

_A/N: I watched the X-Men movies without reading any of the comics or anything, and since there isn't a whole lot about Kitty in the movies, I decided to do my own take on her life and her background. I hope I got her personality right based on the movies, but anyways, enjoy! I'm thinking this will probably be two chapters long, maybe three._

_The title is from a Kitty video I saw a million years ago. I'm pretty sure it's been taken down since, but it really stuck with me. _

_Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men._

* * *

When Kitty is ten, her parents get divorced. She knows she's supposed to be sad, and she is, a little, but what she feels immediately is relief.

They were usually quiet with their fighting, but sometimes they were loud and screamed things at each other that Kitty didn't want to hear. So she buried herself in her schoolwork. Reading helped her lose herself in another world, and in those months right before the divorce, her grades were higher than ever. Kitty had always been smart, but once she started throwing herself completely into studying she began doing even better.

On some level, doing so well meant she wouldn't be just another thing for her parents to argue about.

The divorce wasn't really a surprise, but one thing Kitty hadn't counted on was having to choose which parent to live with. She thinks about it hard one night and decides to split her time equally. But her mom ends up making the choice for her when she gives Kitty's father total custody and promptly moves to Boston. She sends Kitty letters at first, but the letters become less frequent after a while and eventually they stop altogether. Kitty never sees her again.

* * *

Kitty is thirteen when her mutation first manifests itself.

She's having a bad dream that night: mysterious people are chasing her, all the way up to the roof of a skyscraper. At the top, she slowly backs away from them, but they just keep coming after her, and suddenly she's stepped off the edge and there's nothing beneath her feet and she's falling falling falling

When Kitty wakes up, she's still falling.

She panics. Air is rushing by her so quickly, she can't stop herself, and she doesn't know where she is, definitely not in her room anymore and—

She lands in the basement, in a pile of dirty laundry near the washing machine. For a long time, Kitty just sits there, hugging her knees to her chest, trembling. She wonders what is happening to her.

* * *

It happens again the next night. And the next night, and the night after that. It still terrifies her. She briefly debates telling her dad, but decides not to. She's afraid of his reaction. She's afraid of what she is.

Kitty's seen fragments of the news before her dad tells her to go to bed, so she's heard about mutants, about the 'mutant problem'. There was a boy at her school who was caught once stretching his leg out to trip another boy walking two whole rows away from him. For a few weeks after that everyone avoided him, sometimes wrote mean notes on his locker, until he finally changed schools. Kitty has seen how mutants are treated, how they're different from anyone else.

She doesn't want to be different.

* * *

The nightmares continue. Sometimes they're more frequent, but other times they don't come for days at a time. Kitty makes sure never to move the laundry basket. Her dad asks why she's let the laundry pile up so much.

One day when Kitty comes home from school, her hand goes straight through the door as she's attempting to unlock it.

She freezes, staring at her hand.

Before anyone can see her, she pulls her hand back out, hastily unlocks the door, and slams it behind her. In the safety of the house, she sinks to the floor. _Mutant_, she thinks, and tries to get used to the idea.

Maybe it will go away if she just tries hard enough.

But it doesn't go away. If anything, it just happens more often. One morning in the shower, her feet start to sink through the bathroom floor and in her panic to pull them out, her arm goes straight through the wall and she's stuck like that for ten minutes. Another time she's cooking rice and her hand melts into the stove; it doesn't hurt until she pulls hard and gets burned on the way out. More than once she's woken in the middle of a dream to find only half her body actually in her bed, the other half suspended through the ceiling, looking down at the room below.

Kitty starts to feel invisible, like she's not really there.

* * *

Then it happens at school. She's taking an algebra test and is concentrating hard, one elbow resting on her desk, when suddenly she just falls through and crashes to the floor. She looks up to find everyone staring at her. Even the teacher.

Everyone treats Kitty differently after that. Kids she's always been friendly with start looking at her sideways, teachers whisper and stop abruptly when she approaches, and even her friends grow more distant. It doesn't help when she accidentally walks into the bathroom without even opening the door, or falls through the wall she's leaning against. Before long people are scribbling notes on her locker too.

Kitty's quiet by nature, but she becomes even quieter in the hopes that everyone will forget about her completely. She worries again that she's disappearing.

* * *

Half a year passes this way. Kitty pours herself more than ever into her schoolwork, and reserves the rest of her energy for trying not to be noticed. Her father seems oblivious. At home they've each retreated into their own separate worlds.

Kitty keeps quiet, as always. Her nightmares don't increase, but they don't go away either. She's afraid that one day, she won't stop at the basement; that instead she'll just keep falling forever. This thought scares her more than anything.

She decides to learn to control it. She starts slowly, trying to put her hand through her bedroom wall. She begins to notice a particular feeling when it's about to happen: a feeling of weightlessness, of emptiness almost. Like she's nothing more than air.

It's frustrating trying to control something she doesn't understand, but little by little, Kitty starts to learn.

Soon she's able to walk through walls whenever she feels like it, but she still hasn't been able to keep herself from falling.

* * *

Kitty is fourteen when Professor X comes to her house.

Her dad isn't home and he always told her not to talk to strangers, but Kitty is curious and maybe also a little lonely, so she lets the Professor in. She sits on the couch across from him, as if it's just a normal day and he's just a normal visitor, but somehow she senses that this will change everything.

"I run a school for people like you," he tells her. "People like _us_."

"A school for mutants," Kitty says. It's the first time she's ever said that word out loud.

"Yes," the Professor says carefully, gauging her reaction.

Kitty shifts her gaze to her hands, then back up to him. "So you can help me control it?" she blurts out, thinking of the nightmares, the endless falling.

Yes, he tells her, and he tells her about his school, even gives her a brochure, and sitting there with him, Kitty doesn't feel so out of place. She feels comfortable, and safe, and not at all invisible.

That's when her dad comes home. He stops in his tracks, seeing her sitting across from a complete stranger, but the Professor wheels over and offers his hand and Kitty's dad reluctantly accepts the handshake.

"You're a mutant too, aren't you," he says accusingly. "You run the mutant school. And you want my daughter to go there."

The Professor looks surprised, but the expression is only there for an instant.

"I know who you are," Kitty's dad continues. "You don't have to lie to me."

Kitty just blinks at him. She didn't know he knew. She wonders why he never said anything.

"Can I talk to my daughter alone," he says, more of a command then a question. The Professor gives him a long, searching glance, but he nods and leaves. The house seems eerily still without him there, like the calm just before a storm.

In that moment it looks like somebody else's house.

Kitty's dad seems just as uncomfortable as she is. He looks at her for a minute without speaking, and Kitty is surprised to find both warmth and an inexplicable distance in his eyes. "Listen, Kitty," he begins awkwardly, "I thought if I just ignored this, it would go away. You hid it well enough around me. I thought maybe…I don't know. Maybe you'd grow out of it. But if it's really a problem that's not going to go away, I can help. I'll take you to a doctor, an expert, whatever. I'll help you find a way to fix it."

Kitty stares at him. She can't count how many times she's wished whatever was wrong with her would just go away. But over time she's accepted that it wasn't going to, that the only option was to learn to control it. Now that she knows there's a place for people just like her, she doesn't feel strange, or wrong, or even that different, and for the first time in the last couple years she knows exactly who she is.

She doesn't want to ignore it anymore; she doesn't want to go backwards.

Kitty takes a deep breath.

"Dad, there's nothing wrong with me. I don't need to be fixed. This is just who I am."

Her father stares back at her. "It's not normal. I've seen these—these _mutants_ on TV. They're _not normal_."

"I want to go to this school, Dad," Kitty says evenly. "I want to learn how to use my power. It's part of me and it's not going to go away, and I need you to accept that."

Her father's face is getting red. "My daughter is _not_ a mutant."

Kitty stands as tall as she can. "Yes, she is."

It seems like he is fighting with himself, weighing her good points with her bad. Kitty has to stop herself from taking a step backwards. She notices his clenched hands, the tenseness of his muscles, an old scar along his forearm that she's never seen before—this man is like a stranger, and she's already lost him.

"Have it your way," he says, voice stiff with anger. "Go to this freak school. But Kitty," he adds warningly, "if you go, you don't have a place here anymore. Don't come back."

Before she knows it, her father is heading for the door.

* * *

Kitty is frozen for a long time. She doesn't realize how long until she notices the Professor sitting in front of her, watching her steadily. He doesn't say anything. He lets her make her own choice.

"I want to go to your school," she tells him, her voice surprisingly level. "But I have to leave right now."

He nods at her. Kitty wonders how he can be so calm, then wonders how _she_ can be so calm. "I'm sorry that it had to happen this way," the Professor says. There's genuine sympathy in the tone of his words, but also a certain jadedness, as if he's seen this situation play out over and over again. "But I know you'll be happier at my school. You'll be accepted. It would only hurt you to live among people who deny who you are."

His words ring inside Kitty for a long time afterwards, because she finally understands exactly what he means.


	2. Settling

_A/N: So this is definitely going to be longer than a just a few chapters. I've been writing a lot more than I originally thought. _

_Thanks for all the reviews so far! _

_Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men._

* * *

Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters is better than Kitty could have imagined.

As soon as she walks inside, she sees a messy-haired boy hanging from the ceiling by his sticky palms, and another older kid levitating just slightly off the floor, and a lanky blond girl whose skin glows as bright as a flashlight. At every turn, there's someone just like her. And they're not afraid.

The Professor shows Kitty the gardens, the classrooms, the common areas; the photos on the brochure he gave her earlier come alive before her eyes. She can't help the smile that creeps across her face.

That night she sleeps without disruption.

* * *

The next morning, as sun filters through the window, Kitty opens her hastily packed suitcase. She takes a deep breath. The few clothes and books she'd stuffed inside smell just like her old room and she finds herself closing the suitcase just as quickly and heading outside instead. Students are playing basketball or hanging out on the grass, and Kitty finds it surprisingly easy to just fall in with them, as if she'd arrived months ago and not just yesterday.

By the next day, she already knows most of the rules of the mansion (both official and unofficial) and most of the mutants who inhabit it. Kitty starts classes and makes friends and is generally happier than she's been in a long time. The Professor, true to his word, trains her privately until she feels fully in control of her powers. His classes are her favorites. Sometimes she stays after class, and she and the Professor continue that day's discussion. He's the wisest person she knows and she jumps at the chance to hear his thoughts on any topic. Kitty knows it makes her a major nerd, but she enjoys his company just as much as her peers'.

Sometimes, when she's about to go to sleep after a long day of studying and training and hanging out with her friends and even playing pranks (she only recently discovered her mischievous side), she finds herself smiling uncontrollably, for no specific reason. She's just _happy_.

Still, Kitty can't pretend there's not a part of her that sometimes misses her old life. It confuses her, but she does. Just small things—the lake near her house where her dad used to take her ice skating, or the way her best friend would laugh at her when she'd just done something unintentionally funny, or even the chocolate cake at the restaurant she went to every year for her birthday. At first she tries to shake every memory out of her head. But Kitty knows that she can't just erase them: these memories are a part of her too. They're who she is.

Here, she's able to accept every part of herself.

It feels like she's finally stopped falling.

* * *

Kitty soon learns that by trading her old life for a new one, she's only traded her old problems for new ones. Granted, the new ones are infinitely more preferable, but that doesn't change the fact that they're there, obstacles that she can't just phase through.

The first one appears in combat class.

In addition to all the regular classes—like Chemistry, World History, Mutant Ethics—the students also take a training class, where they learn to master their powers. The younger kids and the new kids either work individually with Professor, in special cases, or take a basic training class with Jean. The older kids have a choice of two classes: a self defense class with Storm, which usually involves fighting without powers, and a combat class where Scott teaches students to fight using their mutations. Everyone's at a different level, but Storm and Scott handle classes the best they can.

Under the Professor's guidance, it isn't long before Kitty has enough control to be able to move on to an upper level training class. She's grateful that he chose to help her individually; she knows she's one of the less powerful mutants living in the mansion, so it means a lot to have the Professor give her some of his time.

She opts for Scott's class. She's pretty sure fighting without her mutation would just end in her getting her ass kicked, and she's not really willing to take that risk. Her mutation doesn't give her much in the way of offense, but it does provide a solid defense against pretty much any kind of attack, which comes in handy in Scott's class. It amazes her sometimes how quickly she's grown to rely on her mutation. Kitty knows it's cheating, in a way, and she never actually wins; usually she just phases through her opponent's attacks until they wear themselves out. Scott just sighs and tries to teach the class something new. She listens carefully, but it doesn't show.

Kitty senses Scott's growing frustration with her. In the back of her mind, she knows she's failing him and herself. She's just afraid, and the fear is keeping her stuck. She tells herself that she'll work up to it slowly, but it sounds like a lie even to her. Kitty just can't bring herself to make the first move. Evasion has always been easier for her.

After two weeks of this, Scott asks her to stay after and talk. He suggests that she take Storm's class instead, but the idea of fighting without her mutation sends panic coursing through Kitty; disguising it as stubbornness, she outright refuses. Scott sighs again.

"Kitty, I can't teach you anything new if you won't _try_ anything new. You might as well not even be taking my class."

Her heart sinks, panic shifting into guilt. She swallows. "I'm just scared." Her voice wavers like a little girl's and she hates it instantly. Suddenly, the room seems too small, oppressive, closing in too fast. The lights brighten and blur painfully. She's dimly aware that Scott is waiting for more, and in that moment, Kitty wills the old feeling of invisibility to come back. It doesn't.

"Fighting doesn't come naturally to me," she admits finally. "It's my nature to just…avoid. I mean, it's even my mutation."

Scott thinks for a minute. "You're pretty smart, right?" he says slowly, as if he's just discovering something. "Jean tells me you're taking Biochemistry with the older students. And you're in my Calculus class."

Kitty ducks her head, embarrassed.

"Well," Scott smiles like he's on to something, "just think of fighting as…an equation. Something you need to solve. When you're fighting against an opponent, you have to be calculating. You need to track their moves and find a pattern. Figure out their strengths and weaknesses so you can find an effective way to counteract their attacks. Fighting isn't just physical—it takes brainpower too."

Kitty nods. Already her mind is wrapping around this new way of looking at combat; just a problem to break down and find the solution to. She doesn't miss the relief on Scott's face. "Okay," she says. Her voice catches slightly, but the fear is already starting to recede.

"Good," Scott nods at her. "It _will_ get better, Kitty. Just don't let your mutation own you." He turns to leave. "See you tomorrow."

* * *

Kitty finds that fighting isn't so hard after that. It's easy for her to find patterns and to plan against them. She's not big or strong enough to face an opponent head on, but she can gain the upper hand by sneaking up on her target. Figuring out different ways to attack is actually fun sometimes. When Kitty isn't thinking of fighting as just aggression, force, violence—when she thinks of it more as a puzzle, a problem, an equation like Scott said, it's easier for her. She's put it into her own terms.

* * *

Kitty spars against Bobby a few times in class. He's a couple of years older than her, and Scott says he'll probably get to start training with the X-Men soon. Bobby is an excellent fighter. He's also probably Kitty's best friend at the mansion.

He almost always beats her when they face off, but at least they can both have a good laugh about it afterwards. After one such time, bruised and sore, he and Kitty head to the living room to collapse onto the couch.

Kitty shivers. "Even when I phase through your ice, I _still_ get cold," she complains.

"Quit whining," Bobby says, hitting her playfully over the head with a pillow. "At least you _can_ phase. When I get attacked, I have to actually take it."

"Who's whining now?" Kitty retorts. She grabs a pillow of her own. Bobby attempts to stop her by smacking her over the head again, but she phases through it and manages to get him square in the face. He groans.

"See what I mean?!"

Kitty just laughs. She and Bobby have become fast friends. He's kind and funny and easy to be around, but most of all, he's incredibly genuine. He's just so real and that's exactly what she needs.

Exhausted, they both drop their pillows and relax into the sofa. The younger kids' classes are still in session, the faint sound of teachers' voices carrying in from the hallway. The quiet is mostly unbroken. She loves it when the air is still like this.

"So, Kitty," Bobby muses. She looks over at him, but he's gazing up at the ceiling as if it were the night sky.. "Why 'Kitty'? Why not Katie or Kathy or something?"

Embarrassed, she folds her legs up under her.

"When I was little, I couldn't say my name. I could only say 'Kitty'. So my parents started using it, and…I guess I just never grew out of it."

Upstairs, hidden in a shoebox under Kitty's bed, are all of her mother's letters, all 38 of them. All of them start with "dear Katherine", even though her mom only ever called her Kitty. She never really understood why. A memory surfaces unexpectedly: her dad teaching her to ride a bike, her mom watching them silently from the kitchen window, wearing a private smile. Kitty still has a scar on her shoulder from that first attempt at biking, but she'd forgotten her mother's face at the window until now.

She brings her mind back into the present.

"So why 'Bobby'? Why not...I don't know, Robby or something?"

"Robby?" Bobby repeats incredulously. She has his full attention now. "I'm not going to lie, Kitty, I'm a little offended that you don't think my nickname is good enough. Also my little brother's name is Ronnie, and 'Robby and Ronnie' sounds like some kind of half-rate comedy show."

Kitty shrugs. "'Bobby and Ronnie' is bad enough."

"No way. It's so much better."

"So what's Ronnie like?" she asks curiously.

His expression shifts into something a little more pensive. Kitty thinks they're pretty good friends, but they don't often discuss their families or their pasts or anything. No one at the school really does, so she feels a little bad for bringing it up. "Sorry. Forget I said anything."

"No," Bobby replies, back to normal. "No, it's okay. I just miss him. And I've kind of lied to him—to my whole family actually. They don't know I'm a mutant. They think this is a school for gifted children. _Regular_ gifted children."

"Oh," Kitty says quietly.

"He's a good kid, though. Ronnie is. We used to be a lot closer, but, I don't know. Not so much anymore."

His mouth is set in a line, brow furrowed, eyes faraway. Tentatively, she reaches out to squeeze his hand.

"Things will change. They can't stay this way forever."

Kitty meant it to be reassuring, but as the words leave her mouth they instantly sound more ominous than she'd intended. She's wondering how to fix it when she feels Bobby squeeze her hand back. His face lights up with the most sincere smile. He always seems happy to be around her, just as she's always happy to be around him.

"You're pretty terrible at pep talks, you know that?"

"Hey!" Kitty laughs at him in disbelief. "I just don't have a lot of experience."

"I could find you some kids to practice on," he offers.

"That would probably go really badly."

The sun is starting to set just as classes are letting out. Bobby looks like he wants to ask her something, but before he can, younger students start filing into the room. One of them boldly tugs on Bobby's sleeve. "It's time for Yu-Gi-Oh!" he insists.

"That sounds like a sneeze." Bobby wrinkles his nose, but the kid just tugs harder. "All right, all right, I get the message." he stands and offers Kitty a hand. "Care to relocate?"

She takes it. "I've got to shower, actually. And no offense, but you probably should too."

"Wow, Kitty. So blunt. Have some tact."

"Get over yourself," she teases. "Come on. I can even show you a shortcut."

Bobby pulls a face. "Does it involve phasing? Because I think I prefer being solid."

"I used to, too," Kitty tells him, then walks through the wall and out of sight.

* * *

December arrives before long. Kitty loves the winter; she spends the week before finals studying in the library in front of the big windows, watching the snow float in. There's something so peaceful about the snow settling. The landscape becomes uniform, monotone, differences buried. She knows that underneath the ice and snow nothing is so perfect or unified. But for now, everything is the same, and she takes comfort in knowing that it stretches on unchanged for miles and miles.

Usually around the end of January, Kitty gets sick of the slush soaking her boots and the aching cold that permeates her clothing and stays for hours. Soon she'll be longing for just a glimpse of grass, but for now she enjoys the cold freshness of the weather. It makes her feel new.


	3. Between

_A/N: Thanks for the reviews! To the anonymous reviewer: I've written one small section involving Kitty's family, but there might end up being more. Who knows, this story has a mind of its own.  
_

_Also, I wasn't sure whether Colossus was Piotr or Peter-I've seen it both ways-so I compromised. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men, or Arrested Development, or anything really._

* * *

Winter break comes and some of the kids pack up to go home. The Professor and all the adults stay; so do a surprising number of students. Kitty knows that a lot of the students here have stories like hers, worse than hers probably; even the ones you wouldn't expect, the hyper kids, the ones who always look happy. No one really asks here.

The mansion isn't all that quiet—Kitty guesses that it never is—but it does feel emptier. Most of Kitty's friends stay, though, so she spends a lot of her time with them, playing in the snow or just hanging out on the sofa, talking and watching movies. The new girl, Rogue, hangs out with them too, and Kitty gets to know her a little better. Sometimes they all play pranks on the professors or the younger kids. They find that they can get away with a lot more than when classes are in session.

It's great, but without classes Kitty feels a little restless. She knows that makes her sound like a huge nerd, but apparently that's exactly what she is. She still reads a lot. Sometimes she wanders aimlessly around the mansion, phasing through walls or floors whenever she feels like it. If Kitty scares anyone, that's just an added bonus. While everyone is still getting used to her being around, they're delightfully easy to scare just by dropping down through the ceiling unexpectedly. Scott's reactions in particular are priceless. Of course, sometimes Kitty is just as scared by what she walks into, so eventually she cuts back on the phasing—mostly, anyway. She loves being able to walk through walls too much to just stop altogether.

Only a few days into the break, Kitty is building mutant snowmen outside with Rogue, Piotr, Bobby, and Jubilee—although the latter had bailed after five minutes, claiming the cold had gotten to her. The remaining four have already built a veritable snow army, thanks to Bobby's powers. Piotr waited half an hour before revealing that his artistic talents extended to snowmen, which led to a mostly friendly competition between him and Bobby for the most accurate portrait of Rogue. Pete won easily.

Kitty made sure to watch from safe distance, in case the contest ended badly. It didn't. Rogue managed to appease Bobby by fawning over the ice sculpture of her that he'd created, and pretty soon he'd forgotten all about his loss.

In the meantime, Kitty asks Piotr to teach her how to sculpt a face. He shows her how his hand glides smoothly over the contours of cheekbones, noses, chins, and pretty soon there's a decent replica of her face, staring up from the snowy ground. When Kitty attempts to copy his handiwork, she ends up with a shapeless lump that resembles an ass more than anything. Pete stifles a grin. He's patient, kind to a fault, and really great with the kids, but Kitty knows there's more to him than has a witty, almost childish sense of humor that has only emerged a few times around her, but it's enough to make her wonder what she'd find if she dug deeper.

Bobby and Rogue regroup before long, ready with new ideas for additions to their army. Kitty stomps over her barely recognizable snow face before Bobby can comment on it. They all start building with renewed energy. About halfway through their next project, though, Kitty realizes she can't feel her fingers anymore.

"I'm going to go in for a little bit, guys," she says, breath frosting, and laughs when Bobby flings a perfectly formed snowball at her. "Come on. Rudolph's looking great, you don't need me." Kitty gestures at their latest creation, which resembles a reindeer hybrid, for emphasis.

Pete shrugs good-naturedly at her. Rogue pats Rudolph's head and smiles. Bobby throws another snowball, but Kitty ducks inside just in time to hear it hit the wall. She peeks through the window and sees that in just a few seconds their snowman-making has dissolved into a full-on battle: Rogue is taking cover behind Rudolph, desperately trying to form a decent snowball as Bobby and Pete pelt her with ones from their giant, rapidly-formed stash. Kitty laughs and heads upstairs.

After changing, she decides to make everyone some hot chocolate. They'll probably need it. Distracted, she sinks through the ceiling instead of taking the stairs. Phasing has become so natural to her.

Kitty's halfway to the kitchen when she sneezes and unwittingly pitches forward through the wall, the momentum carrying her through two more walls before she finally stops herself. She lands harder than she intended. Groaning, she sits up, and only then does she realize that she has no idea where she's landed.

She's in a dark and narrow room—well, more of a hallway than a room. Kitty feels for a light switch, finds one, and flicks it on. Suddenly the hallway is bathed in light, and she can see a point in the distance where it slopes down. Kitty phases her head through the wall and sees one of the classrooms. So this is a random hallway next to a classroom…she grins. She's found a secret passage.

Like all the students, Kitty knows about the emergency escape tunnel hidden behind one of the wooden panels in the hallway. Professor Xavier has told all of them about it. When Storm led them all through the passage, she'd said it was in case of a fire, or some other similar circumstance. Everyone knew what she really meant. It was just one of those things, like the base hidden under the school, complete with a jet parked under the basketball court: one of those things that everyone knew about the school but nobody talked about. Everyone here was just waiting to be attacked, shunned, outlawed. They had to be prepared for everything.

That tunnel was common knowledge. The hallway that Kitty is in right now is something else entirely. Curiously, she follows the path. It slants down a few times, then rises, then curves around, seemingly endless. Anticipation rises in Kitty's chest. She's discovered a secret. Maybe everyone already knows about it, maybe not, but it's a part of the mansion that, for now, is all hers.

Finally, the hallway widens into a small, nearly empty space. A desk in one corner is the only piece of furniture in the room. Despite the bare light bulb that hangs from the ceiling, an old fashioned old lamp is perched in the corner of the desk. Everything except the desk is almost suspiciously clean. For some reason, the room feels impossibly far away from where Kitty stands at its entrance. It's so barren, but the atmosphere is full of someone else's emotions.

She crosses over to the desk hesitantly. Stacks of paper litter the surface, all of them covered in the same spindly, precise handwriting—she recognizes it instantly as the Professor's handwriting. So this is his secret hideaway. Guiltily, she backs away. Kitty understands completely the need to have a special space all to yourself, especially in a mansion this crazy. Her inquisitive nature makes her wonder what he's writing, but the respect she has for him pulls her away.

When Kitty steps out through one of the room's walls, she finds herself outside, somewhere on the side of the mansion. She phases back in and tries another wall, which leads into what looks like a storage closet. Kitty sighs. It takes fifteen minutes and a lot of wrong turns, but she eventually ends up in the kitchen, where she'd originally intended to go.

Rogue, Piotr, and Bobby are collapsed on the snowy ground when Kitty heads out to bring them hot chocolate. Bobby's moving his arms and legs to form an angel, somehow still lively, but Rogue and Pete just look exhausted. Kitty grins at the sight.

Pete accepts his hot chocolate gratefully. "You're an angel," he mutters.

"No, I'm an angel," Bobby pipes up, moving his limbs faster. "See?"

Rogue swats at him playfully, but it lacks energy. She sips at her hot chocolate. "That's better."

"_Everything's_ better when Bobby stops talking," Pete jokes, and dodges the ball of ice that flies his way.

Gradually, snow starts falling again, dusting their hair and faces. No one moves. Kitty feels like her body is melting into the snow, like a frozen bed. Somewhere to her right, Piotr yawns.

"Bobby, when are you going home?" he asks.

"Three days," Bobby replies sleepily. "I'll be back after New Year's."

His response casts a muted shadow over the group. Kitty never asked him why he didn't just go home right after classes let out. She thought of plenty of reasons on her own: maybe he was nervous to see his family when he was lying to them about being a mutant, not knowing if they would accept him. Maybe they didn't all get along as well as she'd assumed. Kitty shouldn't have assumed anything. Now she wishes she'd asked.

Another answer to her unspoken question presents itself when she glances over at Rogue, who is biting her lower lip anxiously. Bobby seems to understand without even looking. His hand inches over to Rogue's, and Kitty marvels at his intuition.

The air is still and quiet for a while. Snow falls over their bodies until they begin to blend in, just another part of the endless landscape. Kitty lets the cold soak into her as she remembers the secret room, how it was so full of someone. How the Professor had managed to occupy a space so completely without even being in it. She wonders if she'll ever occupy a space that way. It seems impossible. Kitty feels too small in all ways.

The sky is darkening rapidly. Rogue, Piotr, and Bobby dig themselves out and traipse inside, shivering. Kitty waits as long as possible before leaving. Her body feels foreign, numb, like it doesn't belong to her anymore, like she's just a piece of something much larger. The thought calms her until she, too, succumbs and trudges indoors.

She takes a long hot shower until she feels sufficiently thawed. When she finally curls into her bed and sleeps, her mind maps out the mansion and creates secret tunnels and trapdoors and hideaways that are all her own.

* * *

The next morning Kitty runs into the Professor in the hallway on her way to breakfast.

"Good morning, Kitty," he greets her. His voice sounds a little more stern than usual, and Kitty steels herself from a lecture. She learned on her second day here that there's no keeping anything from a telepath.

"I see that you've discovered my other office," the Professor says, unreadable as always. "Kitty, that's my private space."

She bows her head, respectful, apologetic. "I'm sorry. I left as soon as I realized it was yours."

When she looks up, she's surprised to see the hint of a smile playing across his face. "I should have expected you to discover all of my secret passages eventually," he muses, fondly, then looks her steadily in the eye. "Everyone sometimes needs some time alone, to think, to get away from it all. Even me." Xavier pauses. "But I'll tell you what. If you ever need to be alone for a while, just ask me. I will make sure that my private office is empty."

Kitty can't keep the gentle surprise out of her smile. "Thank you, Professor." He nods to her and continues on his way, and Kitty turns and watches him go. Xavier never stops looking out for her, even when she can't give him anything more than words. It stuns her every time.

* * *

Piotr takes some of the students out to the mall and the movies that weekend. There's only room for six other people, so Kitty ends up getting left behind. She considers riding hidden in the trunk, but it doesn't seem worth it. Then she considers asking one of the professors to take a second car, but they've all been keeping to themselves lately so she thinks better of it. Kitty's not the biggest fan of the mall anyways, but it would have been nice to get out of the mansion for a little. She's feeling restless.

With most of her friends gone, Kitty tries hanging around John. He's good friends with Bobby, and the three of them have hung out together before, so she figures they could become better friends. It turns out that John is significantly more guarded around her without Bobby there. The few times she talks with him alone, she never manages to get past his deeply infuriating exterior. He draws back and her reaction is to draw back too, and then they're just two kids ignoring each other. Kitty gives up.

It used to be, when she met a challenge she would devote herself completely to overcoming it. Something about the winter and the emptiness has sapped her energy. She kind of hates it, but the tiredness won't leave her.

She goes to the library instead, curls up in front of her favorite big window, and reads until she becomes just another character living in a book.

* * *

The snow gets heavier and heavier. Soon no one ventures outside at all. Without the option of playing around in the snow, boredom starts to set in. The remaining students disperse around the mansion and only come together during brief periods of inspired chaos. Inspiration is rare, however. The school has never been so quiet.

Kitty takes to reading for long hours with television breaks in between. She's curled up on the couch watching _Arrested Development_, mind still on the book she had just finished, when Logan wanders into the room. She hasn't talked to him much, or at all really. It hasn't been that long since he arrived with Rogue, and she still gets the sense that he's just one thought away from leaving. It's clearly making Rogue edgy, and Kitty doesn't blame her.

Logan notices her on the couch. He gives her a grimace that only slightly resembles a smile, chews on his cigar absently, and asks, "Mind if I take a seat?"

Kitty shrugs, wary.

He sits at the other end of the sofa and stays silent for a while. Kitty follows his lead and doesn't say anything either. They watch for a few minutes before he says, "Come on, kid, you really watch this shit?"

She sort of looks at him from the corner of her eye. "Well. Yeah."

"Gimme the remote. I'll find something better."

She hands it over. Channels change at a dizzying speed, and she squeezes her eyes shut. "How can you even tell what's on?" she mutters, half to herself.

"Don't get your panties in a bunch," Logan grumbles from the corner of his mouth. His brow is furrowed in concentration, which Kitty notes with amusement. "There." He's found an older movie, some kind of cowboy/bounty hunter/international man of mystery film. Kitty snorts.

"What?" Logan peers at her. He looks so mystified that she laughs.

"Nothing…" He keeps staring. "Okay, it's just…" she pauses. "Exactly what I would have expected."

Logan frowns deeply, and Kitty shuts up. He's still staring at her and she tries to ignore it—she can't deny that she's a little scared of him—but she only lasts a minute before turning back into the line of his stare. "_What_?"

"Nothing."

They actually watch quietly for a few minutes. The movie kind of sucks though. Kitty instantly hates the main character, which for some reason she decides to point out to Logan. Usually she goes along with anything to avoid a conflict, but something about Wolverine kind of makes her want to start an argument with him.

"Seriously, kid?" he grunts in response. "Better than the shit you were watching before."

"_Arrested Development_ is a satire, and it's actually funny**. **The characters are more interesting and complex and the plot isn't tired, recycled garbage."

Logan's glare is enough to make Kitty want to go back to being invisible. "You wanna fight me, kid?"

She flashes him a lopsided, slightly nervous grin. "Over a movie?"

Slowly, he leans back into the couch, pointedly inspecting his knuckles. Kitty shifts away. She's never seen his claws, but she's heard stories from the other students and it's enough to make her jumpy. Logan turns his attention back to her, makes a show of looking her over. "You're too scrawny to fight me anyway," he observes. "It'd be over in a second."

Kitty makes a noncommittal noise.

"What's your mutation anyway, half pint?" he asks.

Instead of explaining, Kitty sinks one arm into the sofa. To her delight, Logan's eyes widen. "Right, you're the kid from that first day. In the Professor's class," he remembers, talking more to himself than to her. "You an X-Man?"

She shakes her head.

"Well, in that case," Logan concludes. "You'd definitely get your ass handed to you."

The only answer he gets is a shrug.

"You disagree, half pint?"

So far, arguing with Logan has been relatively more entertaining than dangerous, so Kitty figures there's no reason to stop provoking him now. She tilts her head, smirks. "Well, you never know."

"Bullshit," he pronounces, but Kitty catches the vaguely incredulous look he gives her. Then he relaxes back into the sofa and with that the discussion is over.

Thankfully, only five or so minutes go by before Kitty is rescued by the arrival of some students around her age. They hop over the sofa to settle between her and Logan. Fortunately for them, Logan is sufficiently distracted by Rogue, who trails behind the others; she smiles sweetly at him and eases the remote from his hand. The entire operation is so smooth that Logan hardly seems to notice what's happened until suddenly he's sharing a couch with six other mutants, watching MTV. Kitty grins to herself at his reaction.

She and the other students soon find themselves running for cover into the kitchen, but it's definitely worth it.

* * *

Logan takes off not long after.

No one thinks much of it. He hadn't been around long enough to make an impact on anyone besides the professors, and Kitty suspects they know his reasons, knew he was going to run off. Then there's Rogue. The day Logan leaves, she starts wearing a pair of dog tags around her wrist. She covers up so much that they aren't easily visible, but Kitty, in her quietness, notices things like that, the same way she notices Rogue beginning to pull away under the surface. It's subtle, but it's there.

In the end, Jubilee and Piotr manage to draw Rogue back out. Kitty watches from the sidelines and doesn't know why. Not for the first time, she calls herself coward.

Bobby comes back after the New Year a little more solemn. He leans closer to Rogue, who leans back on him in turn, and Kitty tries to figure out when she became the third wheel. The snowmen they all built are still standing, but they've been reduced to mere lumps poking out of a sea of white. Kitty starts to feel far away.

Then, two nights before classes resume, she wakes unexpectedly from a blank dream. She heads downstairs and into the kitchen to find Jones blinking furiously at the microwave, trying to heat a Hot Pocket, as Bobby watches with a spoon full of ice cream hovering halfway to his mouth.

Kitty tries to memorize the scene for future reference.

Bobby's spoon has almost made it to his mouth when he sees Kitty, jolts, and misses completely. "Oh, hey, Kitty," he says, ignoring the ice cream coating his chin.

She suppresses the urge to laugh. "Hey," she replies, and smiles at Jones, who eyes her suspiciously as he retrieves his Hot Pocket and leaves the room.

"Want some?" Bobby offers, digging his spoon back into the container.

Kitty crosses the kitchen to find a spoon of her own. "Figures that you would eat ice cream even in the winter."

"Hey, you're eating it too."

"Well," she takes a bite, "you are a terrible influence."

"No arguments there," Bobby grins.

It's as easy as ever to talk to him. Kitty realizes then that nothing's changed. Not really, anyways, not really and not yet.


	4. Waiting

_Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men._

* * *

The morning before classes resume, students file back in, rosy-cheeked, lugging suitcases. The occasional parent or two drifts into the mansion. It's an odd sight. Kitty avoids phasing in front of them, an old habit coming back to light.

Slowly, the snow begins to melt, and spring filters in through its remains. The snow boots and winter coats that decorated the hallways begin to disappear. Kitty watches the gradual changes through the big window in the library, fingers rifling mechanically through the pages of her textbooks.

She's taking physics this semester, and Scott's already taught her how her own mutation works.

He explained to the entire class about how her atoms shift to pass between the atoms of other objects, the denser the object, the more difficult. Kitty is happy to understand on a scientific level how her power works. She has always loved how science compartmentalizes the world's mysteries, explaining them away clearly and logically. Now that she can apply science to her mutation, it seems…less mysterious, less strange. More _acceptable_.

Scott was thorough as always, drawing diagrams, pointing out textbook passages, even asking for a demonstration. "Think you could teach my atoms how to do that?" he'd joked. Despite what some of the students (and Logan) think, Scott does have a sense of humor. It's just restrained, measured out carefully.

When one of the students raised his hand and asked if it was possible for mutations like Kitty's to be taught to others, Scott took it upon himself to demonstrate the answer, eager as usual to capture the class's attention. He had Kitty give him an impromptu lesson in phasing. To the class's delight, his attempt ended with his fist slamming straight into the desk. "All right, show's over," he'd yelled amidst riotous laughter.

The relative hilarity of the lesson didn't take away from the understanding Kitty had gained."You're lucky", Piotr says when she tells him later. "Not all of our mutations are that easy to explain."

Kitty mulls it over. "Maybe that just means you're more advanced than I am," she says slowly.

When he looks at her for clarification, she adds, "If it can't be explained, that just means we don't understand it yet."

They round the corner. After a moment, Pete smiles down at her thoughtfully. "That's a nice way of looking at it."

* * *

No new students come for a while. If it weren't for the seasons changing, the mansion would feel stagnant, stuck in time, paused like a movie in the moment just before the action begins. Kitty feels something brewing every time she watches the news. Everyone feels it—it's hanging in the air, the promise of something major to come.

Kitty hesitates to mention it when she talks to the Professor. She's afraid and she doesn't want him to know it, doesn't want him to think any less of her, as ridiculous as she knows that sounds.

But he stops her as she leaves his office once, says "we're all feeling the same way," and Kitty gives in. Sooner or later, she's going to have to grow up.

Life at the mansion inches along for the most part, although the trouble cresting the horizon lingers in the back of everyone's minds. Bobby and Rogue play video games, Piotr helps the kids get slam dunks on the basketball court, Jubilee offers to paint the nails of everyone within a fifty foot radius. In Mutant Ethics, Professor Xavier brings up Cerebro: is it ethical for him to be able to track mutants? Something about his face suggests that even he doesn't know the answer, that he's looking to them for some kind of justification. Kitty's mind wanders back to subject for days afterward: not so much to the question of ethics, but the concept of Cerebro itself. She thinks in particular of something the Professor had said about the sheer amount of mutants that can be tracked using the device. It's hard to imagine that there are so many mutants in the world.

And it's even harder to imagine how few students are at Xavier's School as compared to the number of mutants that exist in the world, in the United States, even just in New York. Kitty wonders if there are other places like the mansion out there. She wonders if she'll ever find any of them.

* * *

The weather warms even more, becomes breezy and consistent. Kitty relives one of her favorite childhood activities and starts climbing trees again; she hasn't done it since she was seven and broke her arm falling from an unstable branch. It seems a little ridiculous, but it's great for people watching, especially since she's almost entirely hidden in the newly growing foliage.

Mostly she watches the kids out on the basketball court. Generally they have a no powers rule, since some of the kids have mutations that are significantly less useful than others, but occasionally it dissolves into a full-on-game of Mutant Ball. Kitty has discovered that Mutant Ball is insanely fun to observe. Usually it starts when one of the kids decides to shake things up, but a few times it's started completely by accident. One time Jason trips and suddenly turns the exact color of the court, complete with white lines. Another time Theresa, who's sick, sneezes, unleashing a sonic scream that almost knocks Kitty out of her tree. Games of Mutant Ball attract even the older kids; once even John joined in. Kitty's almost tempted to join in herself until she remembers how much she sucks at sports of any kind.

Sometimes, the top of the tree becomes a space akin to the Professor's private study. Kitty asked to use it once, but his presence in the room is so strong that it almost feels as if he's in there with her. There's something so much more open about huddling at the top of the tree, closed in but not at the same time.

Still, Kitty can't stop thinking about the secret room. The Professor had said something about her discovering _all_ of his secret passages. Are there more?

She figures she'll probably stumble across another one sooner or later, especially if she gets cold.

* * *

Kitty quite literally runs into Bobby in the hallway after class one day. He recovers first, grabbing her arm and swinging her around to face the same direction as him. "Come get a snack with me," he suggests, and pulls her along before she can protest.

He spends a lot of time with Rogue these days, which Kitty tries not to mind, but she misses being his best friend.

"You and your appetite," she teases as he leads her to the kitchen. As soon as they arrive, Bobby starts rifling through the fridge and emerges with enough ingredients to make an absurdly large sandwich; Kitty, leaning against the counter, watches with amusement. The silence is comfortable. It always is with Bobby.

Sure enough, he ends up with a sandwich of epic proportions. "This is better than TV," Kitty jokes as he tries to fit it into his mouth. He frowns at her and mumbles something unintelligible around the sandwich, both hands poised to make sure nothing falls out. Her ribs are starting to hurt from laughing.

Once Bobby finishes eating, he immediately starts searching the cabinets for another snack. Kitty watches with raised eyebrows. "You're seriously still hungry after that?"

"How are you _not_ hungry?" he counters, digging through a drawer. He emerges with a box of granola bars. "Score!"

The noise in the halls starts calming down as students disband, heading to their rooms or the library before dinner. Kitty's mind is wandering upstairs to the showers, but for some reason her body refuses to move. Instead she observes Bobby wolfing down a granola bar. Finally his appetite abates and he pushes the box away.

"When's dinner? An hour?" he asks.

"Yeah…you're still going?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Bobby grins. "I'm going to need my energy."

Kitty laughs, skeptical. "For what, doing your homework?" He's trying to restrain his smile and failing miserably, and she narrows her eyes at him. "Wait…really. For what?"

"I start training with the X-Men tonight," he says all in a rush.

"Bobby!" Without thinking, Kitty reaches across the table to give him an awkward hug. "Congratulations! That's amazing."

"I'm kind of nervous," he admits, "but this is what I want. To help them fight for mutant rights. I just want to make a difference."

Kitty's rarely seen him so serious.

"You'll be great. You're perfect for the team."

"Thanks. Seriously, thanks."

They stay there for a while longer, joking lightheartedly with each other, passing the time. Kitty's about to make her excuses and go when Bobby catches her eye. "Kitty," he hesitates. It's obvious that what he's about to say is something that takes up a large portion of his thoughts—once again he's the serious Bobby she doesn't see so much anymore. "Do you ever think about what things would be like if you…if you weren't a mutant?"

The question takes her by surprise. Bobby, who's been here for years, who's almost mastered his powers, who's never shown a single sign that he's dissatisfied with his mutation—it's hard to reconcile that Bobby with the one here and now, asking her this question. Kitty knows the discrimination they face doesn't make it easy, but still, Bobby? He's easily one of the more well-adjusted mutants living at the school. Is it his family? Then it dawns on her—

"Is this about Rogue?"

He slumps, defeated. "Scott asked her to start training with the X-Men too. And she said no at first. I just—I don't know, Kitty. I know it's hard having the mutation she has, and I know I'll never really understand exactly what it's like, never being able to touch anyone. But I can't stop thinking that it doesn't have to be that way. Rogue—she could change it, maybe, she could train herself to turn it off or lessen it somehow—she could work with it, you know? But she just doesn't want it at all. I've tried, but I guess I just don't understand." He takes a deep breath. "Sorry to unload all this on you. I just—had to talk to someone, I guess."

"Don't apologize. You can always talk to me," Kitty reassures him.

Bobby gives her a grateful look. "I was just wondering if you could help me understand."

Kitty doesn't know how to explain that she barely thinks about it anymore—what her life would be like if she was just a regular girl. It's a thought that doesn't weigh on her mind like it used to, and she doesn't really care for impossible theoretical situations anyways. She thinks her mutation is a much deeper part of her than she even realizes. She's the person she is because of it; her mutation showed itself in her personality long before she even knew it existed. She doesn't know if the same is true for all mutants, or if it's true in the same way—Bobby's not a cold person, for example—but for her, she's long since accepted that she's lived her entire life as a mutant. Kitty struggles to put all of this into words.

"I don't know if I can help you," she says finally. "Rogue and I, we're different. But Bobby, maybe she's just scared. Just…listen to her. Maybe—tell her what you told me."

He nods. Kitty catches a faint trace of disappointment on his face, and her heart sinks at it. At just that moment, John walks in. "Guys," he says, looking mostly at Bobby. "I've been thinking. This kitchen's always stocked, the whole mansion's furnished, the garage is huge, and we never run out of _anything_. How does Professor X fund this place?"

Kitty and Bobby stare at him blankly. After their previous conversation, this seems like some kind of bizarre joke.

"Seriously," John continues, frowning at their lack of reaction. "Where do you think Xavier gets all his money?"

"Tuition?" Kitty speculates.

"Okay, but only about half the kids here have parents who are actually paying for them. How much can he make those parents pay? They can't all be millionaires. So where's the rest of the money coming from?"

Bobby furrows his brow. "I don't know, a massive trust fund?"

"A widespread donation campaign?" Kitty chimes in.

"An affiliation with a group of powerful drug lords?" Bobby half-jokes. He seems back to his usual self.

"Bingo," John says to the last guess. "Something shady is going on here."

"The Professor, shady? You can't be serious."

John scowls at her. He turns to Bobby, who shrugs. "I wouldn't rule out the possibility."

"Well," John smirks. "I know who my real friends are." He turns and leaves, presumably to present his theory to more students. Kitty frowns at his back. Sometimes she honestly can't tell how serious he's being.

"I'd better go get ready," Bobby mutters, standing. "Thanks, Kit."

"Anytime. Hey, good luck tonight."

Kitty doesn't miss the glance he gives her as he leaves. It's genuine and warm, just like the Bobby she knows, and it immediately lessens the tension clouding her lungs.

* * *

Kitty's lived at the mansion for close to a year now and she's starting to feel enclosed, trapped almost. She and the other students who don't have families to go back to hardly ever venture into the outside world. There's the occasional field trip, or a run to the mall or drugstore for supplies, or a random outing, but they're few and far between. It's like her entire life is here, inside this one building.

"Yeah, you'll get used to it," John says.

For some reason, that night Kitty's mind is fixated on the photo album she left behind at her old house, the album that contains the memories and the proof of a life outside of this place. She'd stupidly left it behind, thinking she wouldn't want the reminder. She was wrong. She wants it more than anything.

* * *

Eventually, she does get used to it.

* * *

The attack on the president is what all the students have been half-waiting for. The professors keep it hushed, but it's all over the news and when the X-Men all get ready for separate missions, it just confirms everyone's suspicions. The strange combination of anxiety and relief floating around the mansion makes Kitty's head swim.

Logan returns with surprisingly good timing, arriving just as the other professors are leaving. Most of the mansion's occupants treat him with practiced nonchalance, but Rogue brightens and tries to hide it the same way she hides her skin. Bobby grows quiet. Kitty stays out of the way, but she still notices.

They're all on edge, even the younger students, just waiting for something to happen. With the professors gone on their secret missions, it feels closer than ever. Soon something will change, but for now, they're just waiting. Kitty wonders when it will end.


	5. Running

_A/N: Sorry for taking so much time getting this to you! I have no idea why this chapter took so long to write. I had most of it fleshed out, but for some reason a few of the parts were just really hard to get down right. _

_I had a pretty weird dream that I _was_ Kitty not too long ago. I think maybe that means I'm a little too invested in this project…oh well. _

_Also, are these page breaks driving anyone else crazy? Sometimes they just disappear. _

_Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men._

* * *

Kitty is fifteen when the mansion is invaded.

She wakes up to a blinding light washing over her. In just a second she's taken in the shadowed figures standing in her doorway and realized that what she's been dreading has finally happened. Then her instincts take over.

With a deep breath, she slips through her bed—falling falling falling—into the room below and runs without thinking. Things pass in a blur: soldiers with weapons, prowling, stealing into rooms—she runs straight through one, a sensation she's always hated—familiar spaces**,** walls, more walls, other soldiers—she hears some shooting at her, uselessly—she has no idea who they are, who sent them, why they're here, but she's on autopilot and the only thought in her head right now is out out out _out_

Before she knows it, she's outside of the mansion, in the surrounding woods, safe. Safe but alone.

Breathing heavily, she slides to the cold ground for a minute, allowing her thoughts to catch up. It's hard to get her bearings in such a foreign setting. The jarring sound of helicopters pierces the thick night, and she jumps every time their lights pass overhead. Searching, searching. Forcing herself to calm down, she takes in her surroundings, tries to plot where she is in the map of her head.

That's when the gravity of the situation sinks in. Helicopters, soldiers—this is a massive operation. The government is breaking into their homes now? What are their orders anyway? Evaluate? Capture? _Kill_?

Another thought strikes Kitty then: she ran, alone, and she never stopped to help anyone. Her mutation means that no one can ever catch her or hold her down, and she could have extended that power to the others, gotten them out safely, but she didn't. Instead she ran.

And she did it unconsciously, instinctively. Is cowardice ingrained that deeply into her?

Guilt rips at her. Any one of them could be captured or _dead_ and it would be all her fault—and she realizes that for all the training she's gone through, in a real situation like this one it didn't count for anything. It all meant nothing in the end. At heart, she's no hero.

Kitty sits there for a minute, stunned by this realization.

Then she's on her feet. She failed but maybe she can make up for it now; if she doesn't, she'll be a coward forever.

Carefully she slinks back towards the mansion, phasing into trees every time the spotlights swing by. The ivy that covers the mansion looks sinister in the fluctuating light. Even from her distance, Kitty can see the broken windows and the brief flare of some kind of explosive. She swallows, reminds herself what she's doing out here.

Cautiously, she creeps along the forest's outskirts towards the school gardens. That's when she notices the soldiers scrambling up the mossy walls, barking orders at each other, their movements swift but not as silent as before. They're not even trying to be quiet anymore: this is no longer a stealth mission.

Kitty freezes as she takes it all in. Soldiers are scaling the walls, rappelling out of helicopters, swarming through the grounds like ants following their orders without question. They're everywhere, surrounding the mansion from all sides, breaking in the windows, kicking down the doors, slipping through the cracks. They're destroying the school. They're destroying _her_ _home_.

Anger and fear build simultaneously inside of Kitty. Her clenched fists are shaking, but she stays hidden. The helicopters overhead, the noise and the lights and the waves of soldiers force her retreat. _Coward_, _coward_, she repeats to herself. The word edges her away from the mansion, but towards another option.

She slips back into the forest and scrambles down its slope, desperately calculating the position of the emergency tunnel's exit. It's her last chance. She trips and tumbles in her haste, but when she finally reaches the exit it's empty. Breathless, Kitty phases inside. The tunnel echoes with the noises of trampling feet above, but it's empty too.

Just outside are unmistakable signs: fresh footprints, trampled plants. Kitty counts them as her heart alternately sinks and soars. Whoever made it out has already left.

* * *

The sound of soldiers grows fainter and eventually fades away altogether, but the air still rings with ghostly impressions. Kitty finds a spot in the woods that's sufficiently hidden and settles there numbly. She's stunned into stillness, in sharp contrast to the jumble of thoughts racing through her mind, echoing louder and louder. Her pajamas are too skimpy and she can't stop shivering, and her heart won't slow down; she's too on edge. It seems this night will last forever.

She doesn't know how it's possible to fall asleep when she feels so impossibly scared, but somehow she does.

* * *

In the morning, the mansion stands the same it always has, but under the surface it seems haunted. Kitty sees the evidence of last night when she squints. The sun rises over the deserted gardens, but she still spends a long time staring out from the shadows before carefully venturing out. Something in the air feels just as slow. Timid, almost.

Ignoring the disconcerting silence, Kitty winds through the maze of the garden, slowly and deliberately. She hesitates at the door. The early morning calm feels wrong, misplaced; but she brushes it away and phases through.

Inside, shadows pull apart and reform in the corner of her eyes. No matter what direction she looks in, she sees ghosts. The wreckage is everywhere: bullet holes, blown in windows, walls broken through as if they were paper. Kitty is overwhelmed by the destruction. There's a tightness in her chest that won't go away.

She goes through the rooms methodically, trying to deduce who made it out. The only clue she can really make sense of stands just inches away from the emergency trapdoor. The entire hallway is dripping with melting ice, shatters of it everywhere. She follows the watery trail up the wall to the spot where she knows wooden paneling gives way to carefully concealed concrete. The dampness there forms a barely recognizable handprint. _Bobby_.

It's so frustrating that she still can't tell whether or not he's okay.

Kitty phases through the wall and clambers urgently down through the tunnel. There's no sign of anything in it, but she continues on anyway, going up into the garage instead of following the passage outside. Surprisingly, the garage is untouched. The only thing missing is Scott's car, which can only mean that Logan took it.

That's a dead end. There's nothing else for her to discover.

She turns back and walks through walls mindlessly until she ends up back inside the mansion. Surrounded by overbearing silence, she curls up in an untouched corner and just thinks. It's all she has left at this point.

She wonders for the thousandth time where everyone is and if they're okay.

A noise makes her shoot up, looking around frantically for a familiar face, before her eye catches a single bird who's probably flown in through one of the broken windows. It chirps, nonchalant. Kitty glares at it and balks at the fierce anger she feels; she lunges and the bird balks as well, fluttering hastily back outside. The anger dies down just as quickly as it flared up. She stares out the window; it's still again, so silent it's startling, compared to the roar of last night that still rings in her ears. It's the silence that really gets to her.

Kitty knows what it is to be lonely. She's spent years thinking it couldn't possibly get any worse. But at this moment, completely alone in this huge house, not knowing where any of the people she cares about are or even if they're alive—not her old family, not her new family—this is the most alone she has ever felt.

It feels like falling.

* * *

An hour passes before Kitty can move. When she does, it's with a new resolve. She starts cleaning up, the mindless labor shoving all other thoughts from her mind. There's not too much she can do, but even the bare minimum feels like _something_.

The sun is sliding west when she looks up from her work. It's barely made an impression, but that's all she really needs: to feel like she's made a difference, no matter how small. Kitty leans the broom against the wall for a moment. Closing her eyes, she plans her next move.

When she opens her eyes again, there's a face at the window, gaze sweeping from left to right.

Kitty chokes.

Seeing her there, Jones hisses, "Kitty! It's just me!" He taps a little impatiently at the glass, then taps louder when she doesn't respond.

Wheezing slightly, Kitty recovers. She reaches through the window and pulls Jones through. He shudders, but she doesn't let go. "God, Jones, how did you get out? Where did you go? Who—"

"Jeez, calm down," Jones cuts her off. His tone is offhand, aloof as always, but Kitty doesn't miss the brief flash of fear in his eyes at the mention of last night's events. "Is it safe? They're gone?"

She nods. "But—"

"Hang on," he cuts her off again. "I've got to go get the others."

Kitty lets out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding as relief washes through her. "The others? They're okay?"

Jones nods, a little more indulgently. "Yeah, Piotr got a bunch of us out. They're fine." He hesitates. "And you're fine."

"Yeah," she breathes. Jones is kind of an odd kid, more world-weary than expected, but underneath he's still just a kid and he still cares. It's so reassuring to see him here, being the same old detached Jones as always.

He's turning back towards the window already. Kitty offers her hand. "Here, I'll—"

"No, thanks," Jones says hurriedly, and makes a beeline for the nearest door.

Kitty smiles hesitantly after him. Her mutant ability takes some getting used to, she knows from firsthand experience; anyways, she doesn't have the energy to be even remotely offended. She stays exactly where she is until she sees the others creeping through the garden behind Jones. Piotr is bringing up the rear, and it makes her smile to see him try to be stealthy. He got quite a few students out, but Kitty still can't keep her face from falling when she sees that Bobby isn't among them. Jubilee, Rogue, and John are also missing. Her stomach knots, but seeing how many of the other students are okay makes her forget about it for a while.

Kitty's not an overly touchy person: she usually keeps to herself unless prompted, but her relief is so intense that she can't help pulling some of the kids into hugs. Normally she'd get weird looks for trying anything like that, but the students are obviously just as shaken and don't seem to mind. When Pete sees her, he wraps her into a hug of his own.

"I'm glad that you're okay," he mutters. "Is…is anyone else…?"

"Just me." She pulls back guiltily. His words are a reminder of her failure last night, a reminder she doesn't need right now. Biting her lip, she ventures, "How did you…"

Piotr smiles. "I'm made of metal."

To his left, Jason rolls his eyes.

"I fought a few soldiers," Pete elaborates. "The kids all came down to the trapdoor, and I met them there. We went as far as we could before they got tired. I made sure we were well hidden so that they could sleep."

"Then you sent Jones as your scout."

Piotr shrugs. "He volunteered. He's quite sneaky, actually."

"That was really brave," Kitty says steadily. "Seriously. You got them out, you protected them. That's really amazing."

"I did what needed to be done. How did you—"

"I phased," she answers shortly.

Pete frowns at her, but drops the subject. "Have you been able to contact the Professor? Or Storm and Jean?"

Kitty bites her lip. "I don't know how to reach anyone," she admits. "They didn't exactly leave a note on the fridge."

"They left Logan instead," Pete says thoughtfully. "You didn't see him?"

"No." Something occurs to Kitty then. "Do you think they'd come back? The soldiers, I mean?" she asks, vaguely frantic.

Piotr shakes his head. "They got what they came for, I think."

"Pryde, relax," Jones deadpans from across the room.

She scowls and crosses her arms, folding in on herself. "It's a legitimate concern. If they came back—and none of the professors were here—" Abruptly, she stops, unsure how to make them understand.

"Never mind." Pete pats her reassuringly, though somewhat awkwardly, on the shoulder. "Come, we'll figure it out."

* * *

Piotr and Kitty fake good spirits, which seem to catch on as they all pitch in to try and clean up some of the wreckage. Their attempts to contact any of their professors fail, so dealing with the mess in front of them seems to be the only thing they can do. With their odd combination of mutations, the job becomes far easier. A few kids raid the fridge and bring out an odd assortment of snacks for everyone, which they eat between casual comments and even the occasional joke. Kitty can almost fool herself into thinking nothing's wrong. Almost.

As the students tackle the bedrooms upstairs, Kitty slips away. There's something she hadn't thought of before, something that's been weighing on her more and more ever since it occurred to her just a couple hours ago. Phasing through a classroom wall and into the narrow pathway behind it, her chest fills with trepidation. It seems untouched so far. But if the soldiers invaded the Professor's private office, his secret room, Kitty's heart might break entirely. Cerebro's already been examined, the Danger Room thoroughly inspected; they may even have found the escape route, hidden deep in the belly of the school. This is the last sacred place.

It feels like hours before she reaches the room at the end of the passage. But the second she does, Professor X's presence is all around her, calming her, banishing her worries. The tears that come unbidden to her eyes embarrass her. She's sure it looks strange: her, standing in a nearly empty room, crying. But it feels as if the Professor is here, guiding her through this, and the comfort of it is exactly what she needs.

She wonders desperately where the Professor actually is, why he hasn't come home yet, why none of them have come home yet.

Suddenly exhausted, Kitty sinks to the floor and curls herself into a corner. The others will miss her soon—she hopes they will, in any case. If she strains, she can just barely hear them upstairs, sweeping away debris, some of them chattering. The image brings a gentle smile to her face. She'll stay just a minute longer.

Then, out of the blue, a pain unlike anything Kitty has ever experienced shoots through her. With a cry, she curls even further into herself, clutching her head against the white hot, intense pressure. It's a pain that defies all explanation.

Kitty doesn't know how long it lasts. She doesn't know anything. All her thoughts are erased. Everything is blank. She's dissolving. There's nothing nothing nothing

When she finally surfaces, she's too weak to do much but lay there trembling, gasping for air, cold sweat dripping down her face. Everything is much too bright and full. Kitty forcibly slows her breathing until her hands stop shaking and her head stops swimming. An imprint lingers in her mind. It feels like the Professor, but not in the same way as this room feels like him. No, this was something else entirely, and it shakes her to her core.

Kitty doesn't dwell on it. She staggers to her feet and goes to find the others.

* * *

Piotr is holding some of the younger kids close. Kitty's surprised to see Jones among them. She tells them all that everything will be okay, without knowing whether or not she's lying. Every single one of them, Pete and herself included, wears the same expression.

After a while Jones extricates himself and goes to find something for dinner. The remaining students look at each other and silently decide that if Jones has recovered, then it's time they did too.

* * *

It's late when Kitty's ears prick up at the sound of a jet landing. She and the rest jolt up from where they've been sleeping in the living room, feeling safer together, and run. They skid to a halt as the X-Men file out. Kitty's too tired to count the number of people who step off the plane—they all are—but Jean's absence is unmistakable. No one says anything about it. No one says anything at all.

The Professor lingers behind. Kitty desperately wants to talk to him, but the distressed expression on his face makes her shy away.

She wonders numbly if Jean is really gone.

* * *

Everyone disappears into their rooms. Kitty retreats reluctantly, pushing aside her exhaustion. She's sitting cross-legged in bed, staring into space next to her sleeping roommate, when the Professor calls to her in her mind.

Although the mansion is quiet, Kitty gets the sense that only a few of its occupants are actually sleeping. She creeps past the closed doors down to the Professor's office. He doesn't look up when she walks in, but Storm, who's sitting beside him, does. "Kitty," she greets simply.

It feels surreal, but then again, everything has lately. As Kitty sits in her usual chair, the Professor asks her for a favor. He doesn't call it a mission, but he doesn't have to. Kitty ignores her fear and accepts without hesitation. Her façade is perfect. Maybe if she keeps up the act long enough, she'll fool even herself. Maybe the bravery will bloom right into her.

"We'll leave now," the Professor says calmly, as if he were inviting her to tea.

He and Storm debrief her in the car. They give her only the details that she needs to know—how many walls between the drop-off point and Stryker's office, the location of any security cameras, the information they need her to pull from his computer. Anything else she wants to know—why they need this information, who Stryker is, what _happened_—is rebuffed by Storm's always-patient "later" and Professor X's quiet admonishment of "focus on the mission at hand". Storm drives the rest of the way in silence. Every time Kitty tries to catch the Professor's eye, a question on her lips, he shakes his head ever so slightly. She hates being kept in the dark, but she's starting to feel a little insensitive for pushing it so she stays silent the rest of the way.

Once they arrive, Storm and the Professor both turn to her. "Okay, Kitty," Storm says, all business. Is this what all X-Men missions are like? "This is a pretty simple operation, so let's keep it short and sweet. We're going to be right out here. Charles will take care of anyone inside, and I'm going to stand guard. You're going in alone. Get the information, and get out."

"I'm going in alone," Kitty repeats tonelessly. Panic courses through her; she pushes it away.

The Professor makes steady, encouraging eye contact. "I would not have asked you if I did not think you could do it."

She takes a deep breath. "Okay." She repeats it, trying to convince herself more than them: "Okay."

"Remember, we don't want any fighting," Storm warns. "If someone finds you, just get out of there. Understood?"

"Won't be a problem", Kitty replies nervously.

"All right. Good luck."

She nods, swallowing her anxiety systematically, and phases through.

* * *

It's over faster than seems possible. On the ride back home, Kitty means to demand answers, but she falls asleep instead.

* * *

She wakes up in her bed with a faint memory of Storm carrying her from the car in a strangely maternal way. Well-rested but still a little drained, she climbs out of her bed and makes her way downstairs. It's afternoon already, she notes with embarrassment. Classes would be over by now if there were any. Were there? She looks around on her way down. The place is still kind of a mess; some windows still need replacing, and she swears she sees a claw mark or two.

Kitty passes kids lounging around in the cleaner areas of the hall. Storm is making a phone call, but she looks over at Kitty with unexpected tenderness in her eyes. In the living room, she finds Jubilee curled on the couch next to Theresa and Artie, with Jones in a corner armchair flipping channels.

Jubilee peers over the top of the couch at her. "Hey, Kit. You missed class today."

"Overslept," Kitty offers weakly.

"Yeah, looks like it," Jubilee replies. "I mean, unless wrinkled shirts are the new thing. Did you sleep in that?"

Kitty blushes. "Uh…yeah. I guess I should change."

The other girl shrugs. "Whatever. I mean, not too long ago most of us were wearing pajamas and blankets so it's not like any of us are going to judge."

Artie turns and sticks his tongue out at her. "I'm judging," he says loudly.

"Shhh!" Theresa scolds, pointing at the TV screen. "I'm trying to watch."

Kitty chuckles at their antics. "I'm glad you're all okay."

"Really?" Jubilee remarks offhandedly. "I was kind of hoping those guys would get rid of Artie when they had the chance."

Kitty is backing away from a fight waiting to happen when she feels a hand on her shoulder. She whirls around and comes face to face with Bobby. "Uh, sorry," he apologizes halfheartedly.

Without thinking, she throws her arms around him. When she pulls away, he's smiling, if a little wearily. "Hey, Kit."

"Hey."

Instantly she notices the change in him. Maybe it's just an aftershock?

"Thanks for getting us those top secret documents," he says casually.

"The Professor told you about that?"

"Yeah." He scratches his arm absently. "We delivered them to the president this morning."

She cocks her head at him, but as far as she can tell, he's serious. "Wait…really?"

"Yeah. Really."

Kitty mulls the idea over in her head. It does seem unlikely, but then again, these are the X-Men they're talking about. "You guys didn't bring me? I would've liked to meet the president."

Bobby snorts. "He wasn't, like, signing our autographs or anything. But Xavier mentioned you."

"Really?"

"He called you a little girl," he says with the hint of a grin.

"He didn't," Kitty grumbles.

"He did."

"He did," Rogue agrees softly from the doorway.

"It's okay though," Bobby tells her, a little sheepishly. "It's like your superpower. You know, you look like a little girl but you're actually a super dangerous ninja."

He sounds the same, but the conviction missing from his eyes doesn't escape her. Kitty hopes it will heal with time; for now she goes on bantering with him just like they've always done.

"Is that a compliment or an insult, Drake?"

"I think it's a little bit of both," Rogue comments.

"Yeah," Kitty murmurs thoughtfully. "That seems about right."

* * *

She moves on, calculating every change that's occurred. So much can happen in such a short period of time. And this is only the beginning.


	6. Adjusting

_A/N: Sorry (again) for the taking so long to update. I'm going to be away for a couple weeks, so the next update may take a while too, sorry in advance!_

_Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men._

* * *

There are so many changes to process.

For one, John is missing. Kitty has to ask several people before someone tells her where she is.

She's ashamed to admit that she didn't notice anything about John that suggested he was going to change sides. Yes, he was the restless type, yes, he was rebellious, a little bitter, never really fit in at the school, but she realizes now that she'd never looked past that. Honestly, Kitty never paid too much attention to him, and now she regrets it.

Then, of course, there's Jean. Kitty is afraid to ask about what happened to her, but she knows for certain that Jean is gone, in a different sense than John. Her absence is startling. Everything is thrown off balance in her wake: classes, training, the very environment of the mansion. Every member of the team is quieter, disoriented, and it sends ripples through the school. They hold a simple memorial service for her. Kitty stands next to Piotr, clenching her fists so hard that it brings tears to her eyes. It doesn't seem quite real.

They lose Jean that spring, and in a way, they lose Scott too. Everyone is shell-shocked by the loss of Jean, but Scott, understandably, takes it harder than anyone. He goes through the motions at first, but gradually he starts withdrawing. Everyone, both students and teachers, gives him space without having to be told. Privately, they wonder when they'll have him back.

Bobby isn't the same either. He comes back from Alkali Lake much more serious. Kitty's usually perceptive, but it takes her a few days to notice the extent to which he's changed. He was never the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve, at least not _all_ his emotions; it used to be that he'd disguise his feelings under lighthearted jokes, but now they're veiled under a thick layer of seriousness. Kitty still sees his old playfulness underneath, but it's far harder to draw out than it used to be. It only comes out sometimes, now, surprising her like sunshine through clouds.

The change in Bobby weighs Kitty down. She never realized how much she needed his cheery brand of humor. He may not be the only joker in the mansion, the only one whose personality fills rooms, but at this rate, he might be the only one left.

After the invasion, a good amount of the parents pull their kids out of the school and take them back home. Kitty's not surprised—having your children's boarding school invaded by a SWAT team intent on detaining kids for experimentation is enough to freak any good parent out—but she hates seeing the mansion so empty. Her roommate is among those who leave. They were never particularly close, but the sight of the vacant bed alongside hers makes her feel oddly homesick. Storm agrees to assign her a new single room. Kitty sleeps better, but the space seems oddly small without another person occupying it.

All of these changes throw the mansion off balance for a while. Schedules have to be adjusted, classes moved, training sessions and self-defense seminars reorganized. All of this keeps everyone moving too fast to dwell on anything for too long. Kitty is caught up in the blur just like everyone else, but it doesn't fool her. She suspects it doesn't really fool anyone.

* * *

For the first few days after his return from Alkali Lake, the Professor refuses to talk to Kitty.

He never declines outright, but every time she knocks on the door of his office he tells her to come back later, and if she stays after class, he claims to be busy. His constant rebuffs start to make Kitty feel bad for even trying.

She's floundering a bit just like everyone else, and the Professor has grown to be something of a mentor for her. She trusts and respects him and looks to him for guidance, and even though she knows he's dealing with worse than she is, it doesn't hurt any less that he won't see her.

Even Logan notices. "Charles is just going through a hard time," he says by way of explanation. "If you need to talk…" she sees him hesitate once he realizes where his own sentence is going. "…uh, you can come to me," he offers reluctantly, looking so uncomfortable that Kitty knows she won't. She almost laughs at the thought.

She contents herself by reading for long hours in the library, late at night when the mansion grows peaceful, and waits until the Professor is ready.

* * *

Kitty officially meets Kurt on the third day. She's piling clothing indiscriminately into a washing machine, humming distractedly to herself, when he materializes unexpectedly in the room. One moment she's loading in the last few shirts, and the next a dark, smoky blur appears in the corner of her eye. Kitty knocks against the washing machine in her surprise, and Kurt spins around at the sound to find her there. "Ah, sorry, Fräulein," he apologizes. "I seem to have miscalculated."

Kitty hesitates a moment. She's seen Kurt before—across the hall, outside with Storm a few times, in the kitchen—but she's never seen his mutation in action, and for that matter, she's never seen the tattooed blue skin or the tail up close. She can't imagine having a mutation that affects physical appearance so drastically. Kitty is so used to fitting in, being invisible. Ashamed, she remembers how she took a step back the first time she saw him, when he stepped out of the jet instead of the mutant she was expecting. She wonders how often he gets a reaction like that.

Kurt is studying her curiously. "Fräulein?"

Flustered, Kitty wipes her hands on her jeans. "Sorry about that. I'm, uh…I'm Kitty."

"Kitty?" Kurt repeats. He tilts his head thoughtfully. "That is a strange name."

"It's short for Katherine," she explains, considering for the thousandth time just going by that name instead. It would save a lot of questions and teasing and bad nicknames.

"Ah." Kurt smiles, revealing small white fangs. "I am Kurt Wagner, otherwise known as Nightcrawler." Kitty likes the strange lilt of his voice, the traces of his native language.

"Nice to meet you."

"Likewise."

She turns, slightly awkwardly, back to the washing machine and carefully tips in a capful of detergent. One of her shirts is caught in the door so she phases a hand in to loosen it. Kurt watches with interest.

"You are the little girl who walks through walls."

Kitty twists the dial and punches the start button, filling the room with background noise that she has always found oddly calming. "I'm not really a 'little girl'" she corrects.

"Ah," Kurt says. "You may not be young, but you are most certainly little."

"Yeah," she mumbles, suddenly shy. "I've been told. So you, um…you teleport?"

"Yes," he answers with a toothy, vaguely mischievous smile. "I have already given a demonstration."

After a beat, Kitty returns the smile. "How far can you travel?" she asks curiously. "You said you'd miscalculated. Does that happen a lot? How do you know where you're going? How precisely can you control where you end up?"

"You ask many questions."

"Scientific curiosity," Kitty mutters sheepishly. She feels an uncontrollable blush spreading across her cheeks. Kurt notices.

"Do not be embarrassed. I am glad that you are interested." The washing machine emits a low growling noise and they both jump; Kurt checks the watch on his wrist. "I will answer your questions, but first, could you direct me towards the office of Professor Xavier? I am a little lost, and I do not want to be late."

Kitty's face falls at the mention of the Professor before she catches it. "Uh, sure. You can follow me; I'm headed in that direction."

On the way, Kurt explains the limitations and nuances of his mutation. He tells her there's a kind of map inside of him, one he feels intuitively instead of visualizes, though he has to know an area before incorporating it into this map. Kitty listens, fascinated, interjecting numerous questions that he answers graciously. When they reach the Professor's office, Kurt offers in his cadenced English to continue the conversation.

She walks away with a lighter mood. Of all the negative changes in the mansion since Alkali Lake, she's glad there's at least one positive one.

* * *

On her way back down to the laundry room, Kitty runs into Storm, who looks incredibly frazzled and barely notices her. The past few days have been trying for everyone, but Storm seems to be taking the brunt of it. With Jean gone and Scott essentially out of commission, a large portion of their responsibilities has fallen to Storm. She's a very capable woman, as anybody who's lived at the school for a few days can attest to, but the workload is enough to derail anyone.

"Ms. Munroe?" Kitty calls after her.

Storm spins around abruptly. "Oh. Kitty."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" she asks, timid in the face of the older woman's obvious haste.

Storm hesitates. "Normally I wouldn't ask a student to assist with this. But in these circumstances…"

When Kitty offered, she thought she'd be filing paperwork or something similar. Instead, she ends up in charge of Jean's lower level Chemistry class, helping them review for upcoming exams. It seems ridiculous to stick to the schedule after everything that's happened, but the school has to follow guidelines from the state, so Kitty pushes past her public speaking anxiety and takes over.

One day she's explaining ionic bonds to Lauren when she has a sudden flash of the future: her, teaching a class of her own to a new generation of mutants. She never thought she'd want that kind of future. She'd never even thought about the future before.

The vision fades, but Kitty doesn't forget the feeling it gave her.

* * *

Slowly—over a period of weeks—Bobby tells her everything. About his parents, his brother, John, the base, Jean, Rogue, everything.

His story comes out in snippets, in moments stolen between classes and his X-Men training. He's become considerably harder to read. When he tells her, in more detail than anyone else had, about his last day with John, he's more guarded than ever. His feigned indifference bothers Kitty, and even though she knows she shouldn't, she tries to get a stronger reaction out of him. She usually never pushes anyone—she's always just let people be themselves, open up if they want to—but this unresponsive Bobby contrasts so sharply with the Bobby she knows that it's making her heart hurt.

Still, he resists. "He's allowed to make his own choices," he says stiffly. "I just wish he hadn't put himself into a position where…where I might have to fight him one day."

"But it's more than that, isn't it?"

For a second Kitty thinks she's done it, that he's going to open up to her completely, tell her everything else on his mind. But then his eyes harden. "You all feel bad for me because my best friend abandoned me for the enemy. But _none_ _of you_ know _anything_ about it," he hisses, jaw clenched.

Kitty flinches back. She shouldn't have pushed him. What's gotten into her? She forces herself to calm down. Quietly, she says, "He was my friend too."

Bobby just shakes his head. "No, he wasn't. Not really."

There's a pause. Kitty tries to meet his eyes, but he won't comply. It's true, what he said. John tolerated her more than actually liked her. They weren't really friends, more like acquaintances who shared a friend in common. She never tried very hard to get to know him, and he never tried too hard to get to know her.

"You're right," Kitty admits finally. "It's not the same."

He still won't look at her.

"I'm sorry," she continues. "You're right. I don't understand at all. But I'm trying to. I don't pity you or look down on you or anything. You're one of my best friends here." Y_ou're my best friend_. "I just want to understand."

Bobby's fiddling with his hands. "Okay," he mutters, and then he looks up at her. "We were _friends_," he says in a tight voice. "He should have at least told me. I respect his choices even if I don't agree with them. But he didn't say anything to me at all."

He takes a deep breath. Kitty watches him intently.

"I lost my family, my teacher, and my best friend in one day, and I didn't even see it coming. I don't want to lose anything else."

For the second time, he averts his gaze, as if ashamed to have revealed this to her. Kitty hesitates before reaching out to place her hand over his. "I'm here, Bobby," she reminds him gently. "I'm here and Rogue's here and the team is here, and we're not going to leave you."

He nods halfheartedly. "It's just—I just realized how easily you can lose everything."

"You didn't lose everything," she tells him firmly. "We're still here. _I'm_ still here. And I'm _not_ going to leave you."

Bobby doesn't say anything, and for a moment she's worried that it was a bit too much, that maybe she overstepped her boundaries, and since when did she have boundaries she needed to tiptoe past anyway? But he doesn't pull his hand away. After a moment, he offers her a weak smile, and Kitty breathes.

* * *

Finals, in a spectacular case of bad timing, are scheduled for the week after. Kitty finds herself spending the next few days at a table in the library, amidst students who migrate restlessly from table to table. A few kids from the Chemistry class seek her out for help before moving on to find their classmates. Bobby and Rogue take seats across from her, two constants in the bustling library.

Kitty furrows her brow at a highlighted passage in the library's copy of _Hamlet_. She loves reading and can remember even the most insignificant details, but when it comes to analysis she's a little lost. When she looks up, Rogue is sitting next to her.

"Do you need any help?" she offers in her soft accent.

"Actually, yeah," Kitty admits, a little surprised. "That would be great."

"I had to read _Hamlet_ at my old school…" Rogue's explanation trails off. Kitty slides the book over, understanding, and Rogue refocuses. "Okay, I know sometimes Shakespeare sounds like a foreign language, but you see here where Hamlet says 'Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt'?" She taps a line with the end of her pencil. Kitty flips her notebook to a fresh page and starts furiously scribbling notes.

It turns out that Rogue is really good at literature. An hour later, Kitty has three pages full of notes and a far better understanding of Shakespeare. "Thank you so much, Rogue," she says, then looks up at the library's clock. "Oh god. Sorry I took so much of your time."

Rogue shakes her head politely. "It's okay. I was done studying anyways." She shares a private smile and a few words with Bobby; her gloved hand brushes against his shoulder and he leans into the touch. Kitty notices Rogue's smile turn sad as she gathers her books and hurries out. Bobby looks pointedly down at his notebook, and she doesn't say anything.

One of Kitty's students—it feels so strange to think of them that way—comes up to her with a few questions not long after. While Kitty is explaining a chemical reaction to her, she notices that Bobby has been staring at the same page for nearly twenty minutes. As soon as the student leaves, Bobby closes his notebook abruptly and says, "Can I ask you something?"

"Um. Sure."

"How do you…" his face is twisting uncomfortably, so Kitty attempts an encouraging smile. "…how do you deal with, you know, your family…?"

The sentence never finishes, but it doesn't need to. Bobby's tapping his fingers against the table, seemingly an odd nervous habit of his. Small honeycombs of ice form every time his fingertips make contact. "It's just, you make it look so easy. Giving up your family, your home. Your entire life before this."

"It wasn't. It's _not_." Kitty pauses, lowers her voice. "But it was easier for me. I didn't lose as much as you did. My dad and I had been growing apart for years. He was my only family, and I didn't really have any friends. There wasn't really anything left for me there." She bites her lip, worries the edge of a page between her thumb and forefinger. "But it was never _easy_. I just…dealt with it by pretending it didn't matter."

"Oh," Bobby says hoarsely.

"Maybe they just need some time," she offers with a weak smile.

"Ronnie called the police on me," he states flatly.

"He's just a kid. He'll grow up."

Bobby's frowning skeptically at her. He reaches for his notebook again and Kitty feels him slipping away.

"Just…give them some time," she repeats, almost pleading. "They'll remember that they love _you_. And that your mutation has nothing to do with it."

Frustrated, Bobby scowls. "And how's that working out for you?"

She's taken aback momentarily.

"Sorry," he mutters. "I didn't mean that."

"It's…it's okay," says Kitty hesitantly. Bobby's comment sends her mind spinning to places it hasn't been in a while, and it takes all the force she can muster to drag it back.

"You're right. I just need some time," Bobby mumbles, pushing away from the table.

Kitty watches him leave sadly. He'll recover, she knows, but there's no way he won't change when he does.

* * *

Bobby's comment—even though she knew he said it in the heat of the moment, even though she knows (_hopes_) he didn't really mean it—keeps stirring thoughts up in Kitty's head, no matter how she tries to stop it. The parents who come by to take their children home don't help. Bobby avoids her for the next couple of days; avoids everyone, really. In his absence, she finds it harder to still her mind. She hasn't thought about her dad in so long.

She hasn't thought about her mother for even longer.

Kitty may act nonchalant about it, so much that she's fooled herself into being nonchalant, but there's a part of her that will never stop wondering why her mom stopped talking to her. She used to analyze it, because there must have been some reason; there must have been something about Kitty that made her mother stop writing.

She saw it coming, of course. But that doesn't keep her from wondering, now more than ever. When she thinks about her mom now, it's not colored with resentment, or anger, or longing, or anything. It's purely analytical. This bothers Kitty more than anything.

The box of letters sits at the foot of her new bed and occasionally she'll reach into it and fish out the last letter, sent a little over four years ago. She'll hold it in her hands for a minute without actually reading it, even though she doesn't remember anything beyond the _Dear Katherine_ that graces the top of every single one. Kitty read each letter only once, they day she received it, and never again. She's not completely sure why.

Kurt catches her brooding one day (when he teleports into her room accidentally, making her jump out of her skin, yet again) and asks her for a tour of the grounds. Kitty accepts, mostly for the distraction. As she leads him through the gardens, Kurt tells her a bit about his life in Germany, even teaches her a few German words. Kitty listens with her full attention and finds afterwards that her mind feels considerably less crowded. Calmer.

She goes up to her room after and pushes the box of letters under the bed. She doesn't feel like dwelling on them any longer.

* * *

Bobby finds her later that week, sitting just outside the mansion's back entrance, a book lying forgotten on her lap. "Hey," he ventures quietly.

"Hey."

He sits down beside her. After a beat, they both blurt out "I'm sorry" at the same time.

Bobby frowns. "For what?"

"Pushing you."

"It's not your fault."

Kitty's silent for a moment. "It's not your fault, either," she says finally.

He shrugs. "I still shouldn't have said it." Looking over at her, he touches her shoulder lightly. "I wish I hadn't, Kit. You didn't deserve it."

"You didn't deserve it, either. What happened with your family and John—any of it."

She watches him closely as he sighs and rests his chin on his fists. "You're a really good friend. I'm glad I have you."  
"You're my best friend," she whispers, then blushes fiercely. Bobby doesn't comment, but she thinks she sees a hint of a smile before his hand reaches over to squeeze hers. She squeezes back.

It's dark out, but the moon glows over the garden and a faint sprinkle of stars is visible. Both of their gazes turn upwards unconsciously and linger for a few minutes.

"I wish I knew the names of all these stars," Bobby murmurs.

"Well," Kitty speaks up, "that one over there, the bright one, that's Spica. It's in the constellation Virgo—you can't really see it from here, but it goes up like this…" she traces a line with her finger. Beside her, Bobby laughs.

"Of course you know them all. I don't know why I'm surprised." He nudges her with an elbow. "Such a nerd."

She nudges him back, pretend-indignant. "You want to learn them or not?"

"I'm just teasing," he grins. "Keep going. What's that one called? The blinking one over there?"

Kitty squints. "That's a _plane_, Bobby," she points out, before realizing that he's only joking. "You're insufferable."

"You've been hanging around too many old people lately. Insufferable, really?"

She elbows him in the ribs, harder this time. When he tries to return the gesture, she lets him phase right through her. "You cheater," he admonishes.

She just shrugs. "Surrender."

"Fine." Bobby lays back, a little weary; she does the same. Their eyes drift upwards again. "Seriously, though," —his voice is a little faraway now—"teach me."

Kitty turns her head to look at him. His gaze is fixed firmly overhead, and she is taken aback momentarily by his focus.

Her fingers curl against stone as she looks back up into the sky. "Okay."

* * *

They stay outside together for another half hour. Bobby leaves her then, claiming he's cold, making her roll her eyes. But she stays, just…thinking. Calmer than she's been in so long.

The next day, they study together for their Calculus II exam, working problems and comparing answers and joking aimlessly. Rogue, studying history beside them, shakes her head every so often at their antics, but Kitty catches the smile she's trying to hide. Bobby's still not quite the same as he used to be, and he probably never will be, but they're all adjusting. She'll get used to this new Bobby in time.

* * *

Instead of giving an exam for his Mutant Ethics class, Professor Xavier holds a final discussion, a kind of debate that he stays out of and takes careful notes on instead. Each student is required to participate at least once, using points from previous classes. Kitty's not generally an argumentative person, but class discussions are different. She likes making points or disagreeing to expand the conversation, especially when the subject is something that matters to her, as is often the case in Mutant Ethics. The final debate is no exception.

When it's over, Kitty packs up her things with the rest of the students. She's given up lingering after class, although she can't help making sure she's the last to leave, just in case. She's almost out the door when the Professor calls her name.

Trying not to appear too eager, Kitty turns around slowly. He's smiling at her—he sees right through her, even without his telepathy—and the smile has a hint of guilt, but it's also warm, encouraging, beckoning. "Stay for a minute," he suggests calmly. "We have much to discuss."


End file.
